Weredragon

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Weredragons are big, half-beast, half-dragon enemies in Heretic. They make their first appearance on E2M1: The Crater. Weredragons, like the player and the gargoyle, can be gibbed if killed by an attack that inflicts significant damage, but because of their high health rating, this is a rare occurrence and can most easily be produced by using a powered-up Firemace.

According to the description in the Heretic manual, the Weredragons infest the darkest lairs of the Order. Possessing all of the strength and agility of a tank, these lumbering creatures belch a body-blasting fireball.

However, the manual incorrectly states that the player will encounter ghost weredragons.

Their skin colour allows them to blend in somewhat in caves and dark areas. Weredragons attack the player by spitting out fireballs which inflict 4-32 points of damage and are affected by the push of wind. At melee range the weredragon's breath will do damage directly, with slightly less damage potential.

Despite the manual's indication that the weredragon is sluggish and not very mobile, it is actually as fast moving as a sabreclaw, making it the joint fastest opponent in Heretic.

These tables assume that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, impact animations, backfire checks, and smoke trails are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.